Breathing Room

Gibson Headers for the 5.9L R/T Dakota and Durango

If you can think back to November 2002, you may remember our real world combos story that we did on our little in-house R/T. In that story, we covered the installation of a K&N Fuel Injection Performance Kit (FIPK), Gibson's after-cat single exhaust, and Hypertech's Power Programmer III. Those products gave us 16 hp and 30 lb-ft of torque, but there was one piece of the puzzle that we didn't cover: headers.

We went back to Gibson to have the company install a set of its emissions-legal bolt-on headers. The new headers feature mandrel-bent tubing in either a nickel-chrome-plated finish or stainless-steel construction. Gibson spends hours tuning the headers to match the needs of each vehicle. Performance gains are engineered to come in at low- and mid-range rpm/highway speeds, so Gibson will help you pull that grade or jump out of the hole. The headers will not void your vehicle's warranty and come with a lifetime warranty, gaskets, and hardware.

The guys at Gibson install headers and exhaust all day, and they had these headers in and the system buttoned up in a few minutes shy of two hours. You should be able to get them in close to that time with a few common tools and some patience.

As you can see, along each step of the way, the products made power, but the numbers aren't super high. Yes you might be able to get 10 hp from an air intake and 15 hp from an exhaust system, but that doesn't mean by doing both you get 25 hp total. Usually the first modification you do will show the biggest gains, but as you add more products, the numbers become only a percent of what they do alone.